For sixteenth-century Nahuas, to know was to see. In order to see knowledge, however, one’s vision had to venture out from the body and explore the world around them, where it mingled with materials and spaces, only to travel back and report what it had experienced. This view of learning, known in Nahuatl as īxtlamachtiā, or “making things known to the eyes/face,” was possible thanks to an extromissive and haptic sight. As I argue in this presentation, such indigenous perspectives of a physical, exploratory sight help situate knowing as an embodied practice, but one where materials and spaces have agency over human viewers in what they reveal and conceal.
To focus this argument, I examine how Nahua religious leaders of the Mexica Empire (c. 1325–1521) learned to make offerings for the sacred figure of rain, Tlaloc, in a ceremony called Etzalcualiztli. In June, trainees followed their religious instructors from the capital precinct of Tenochtitlan into the wider Valley of Mexico to gather grasses, reeds, and sap from the wet landscapes over which Tlaloc reigned. When they returned, they watched their instructors shape these materials into holders, mats, and figurines, closely observing their properties. They then practiced making the works themselves, mimicking the movements they had witnessed. Upon finishing, they carried the completed works to Pantitlan in nearby Lake Texcoco where a human made drain lay visible. There, they offered them, but as the heavy, summer rains fell, the offerings and architecture were swallowed by rising water, becoming once again part of Tlaloc’s world. This presentation investigates these didactic moments to understand how Nahua religious trainees learned about Tlaloc, his spaces and materials, as well as how to transform them. It also explores how, at times, certain aspects of that knowledge were beyond the grasp of a haptic sight. To do so, I examine sixteenth-century Nahuatl texts and Nahua drawings of the ceremony, as well as ecological examples of the works and landscapes mentioned above.